I am very disappointed that they haven't ironed out all the AVCHD rendering issues for PD9
PD9 was great until I went to produce my movie.

I import a bunch of pictures, then use the slideshow function on groups of them (selecting different types such as motion, 3D slideshow, cell slideshow, etc).

So I spend 6 hours putting the project together, it previews fine, the mediaplayer plays it fine.

then I go to produce an AVCHD file (tried different settings, progressive, not-progressive, 24 Mbps AVCHD, Standard AVCHD, turning GPU acceleration on/off,changing the slideshow quality slider in the preferences) and I get a bunch of artifacts (see example screenshot). The artifacts only happen during rendering of the slideshow portion (other portions of the project include HD video and regular pictures that I add transitions manually. Those render fine. The problem is when rendering the slideshows.

Another annoying feature that didnt make it into PD9 is that you can't adjust the duration of the slideshows anymore (even though the documentation says you can!), please fix this Cyberlink!

background:
i7 920, Vista 64 ultimate, 12GB Ram, dual ATI 4870 in crossfire, catalyst 10.12, ffdshow codecs.
Running PD9 Ultra build 2330 (latest)

I have been a heavy user of PD7, PD8 and now PD9. I know about all the little tricks people talk about, and I have done them all.

The problem is a plain and simple AVCHD rendering bug.

I may have to go back to PD8 to resolve this issue, or waste a bunch more time and go into the slideshow, figure out which pictures were used and manually edit them/add transitions.

This has been very frustrating to say the least.....

Thanks for listening.

Alex T.